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My recollections of World War 11.

1939 to 1945

Born in March 1931, I was just over 8 years old when war was declared against Germany. At the end of August 1939 I was on holiday with my parents staying with my mother’s sister in Tiptree.
My father was in the Territorial Army in 1939 serving as a WO with the 141 Field Ambulance RAMC.
Our holiday was interrupted several days before war was declared as my father was recalled to his unit based in Chelsea barracks. My parents departed back to Perivale Middlesex, and left me in Tiptree with my aunt. When war was declared on September 3rd 1939, it was decided it was safer to keep me with my aunt in the quiet countryside rather than return to London.
My aunt and uncle was a childless couple and did not really understand how to cope with an eight year old only child. I can remember adjustments had to be made on both sides.
By the middle of September I started attending the local Church of England school in the village. This was the first of my many changes of school during the early days of the war.
My uncle who had served in the First World War, decided to join the Local Auxiliary Fire service. I remember helping the man across the road from my aunt’s house, to build an air raid shelter in his garden. It consisted of a large hole in the ground surrounded by sandbags resting on timbers and corrugated sheets covered with earth.
I can also remember my run ins with the local kids in the road, who used to chant Middlesex twerp whenever they saw me until I hit the ring leader on the nose. Much blood and angst from aunt and uncle, but the bullying stopped.
Life was pretty uneventful until December 1939 when my mother came down to Tiptree to spend Christmas with us. My father was somewhere in France with his unit.
My first Christmas of the war was happy enough with food and presents as usual. An air rifle and a football were two I can recall. My uncle played football with me in the garden, and much to my aunt’s displeasure he managed to kick the ball through the glass window to the dining room.
After Christmas my mother decided that London was quiet and safe at the moment and she was also lonely on her own. So I returned to Perivale with her and back to my original junior school.

In March 1940 my father who was now the RSM of his unit, came home on a short leave from France over my birthday. Before he returned off leave he bought me a really superb set of roller skates. I remember it was a sad time though, as we did know when we would see him again.

May 1940 and the invasion of France and the Low Countries. I did not realise the significance of this or the real dangers of the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk in June. I knew my mother was very worried about my father and whether she would see him again. They were anxious times I know and the relief we both experienced when we received a telegram from Scotland saying he was safely back in the UK.
He came home on leave a few weeks later and my parents decided that as a family we would try and stay together come what may. The schools had broken up so we all departed for Scotland one hot summer evening on a very crowded train from Kings Cross travelling over night to Aberdeen. I remember crossing the Forth Bridge early the following morning, a magnificent sight.

We arrived in the small town of Turiff some distance from Aberdeen. As a family of the military we were billeted in the house of the Local bank manager, who was responsible to the government for the distribution of meat to Scotland.

They were a lovely family with an only daughter who was several years older than me. She had one of those wind up gramophones, with a whole selection of records some of them were of the semi comedian type. Three of these took my fancy which I played and played and naturally learnt the tunes and the lyrics by heart.
There was no shortage of good food I remember and the local strawberries were delicious.

We left Turiff after a 3 week stay and my parents and the 141 Field ambulance moved down to Dunblane in Scotland.

My father since his escape from Dunkirk made a few references about his experiences of that time. He told me how he was at the end of the mole at Dunkirk harbour with a number of wounded soldiers, trying to get them off on to a destroyer. He was helped by two soldiers with a bren gun who were preventing
Other able bodied soldiers waiting in the queue trying to go in front of the wounded.
He was one of the last groups to make it out of the chaos of Dunkirk. Having boarded the destroyer it ran out of coal and the crew were ripping out any timber they could find to make it back to England. On arrival at the port for onward journey to wherever, the WRVS were there with fresh white bread sandwiches filled with peanut butter. A welcome sight having had nothing to eat for several days. Unfortunately their stomachs could not take this sort of food; my father could not eat a peanut butter sandwich for the rest of his life.
He made one further comment years later when I was recounting to him about my visit to the Menin gate in 1982, he said the last time he saw that gate was in 1940 when the German panzers were coming over the hills a few miles away.

We arrived in Dunblane in August 1940 when the children in Scotland were returning to school after the summer holidays. My parents decided to use a lady friend of theirs to tutor me at home rather than subject me to the Scottish education system. It did not work as the subjects she set me I got most of it wrong because I rushed through it so I could go down to the local station and help in the office.
Also we were staying in a house with several lodgers down by the river who taught me how to play pontoon. When my parents went out in the evening for a drink, I used to creep down and play pontoon for real money with the lodgers, and smoke my father’s pipe. Disaster struck one evening when they came back to collect something they had forgotten. I also learnt how to poach salmon from the river that runs through Dunblane by one of the local lads using a large white cloth.

When we had been in Dunblane about a month we moved into a rented house. And at that time I was sent to the local school, where I was constantly bullied because I was English. The battle of Bannock burn was refought on several occasions. I lost most of the time but I certainly learnt how to fight.
I had only been at the school for a few weeks when they all broke up again to help with the tatty (potatoes) picking for three weeks.

I never went back to the school as my fathers unit was on the move again. Whilst we had been in Scotland he had been commissioned in the field to the rank of full lieutenant as a quartermaster to his unit, still the 141Field Ambulance.

We moved back into England at the end of October and finished up in rented rooms in a town called Macclesfield. The land lady was a strange person and I recall she kept spare coal in the bath and lived mainly on bread and margarine.

I was sent to yet another school and it was here the songs I had learnt in Tariff stood me in good stead. The school Headmaster used to arrange impromptu concerts and I became one of the “turns” with my three comedy songs. I spent until March 1941 at the school and then it was time to move on an again. My father was posted to Northern Ireland, my mother returned to London and the Blitz and I was sent to stay with my grand parents in Castle Hedingham in Essex.

Whilst as a family we were tripping around Scotland and the north of England we missed the battle of Britain and the start of the blitz on London and the major towns in England. Although we did see and hear the raid on Manchester whilst in Macclesfield.

I soon settled in with my grandparents as it was very familiar to me having spent many holidays with them.
As I did not know how long I was going to be with them I attended the local village school. It consisted of two rooms with three age ranges/abilities in each. Obviously the school did not know where to put me. I remember starting in one group in the morning, moved to the next group in the afternoon and into the third age group the following morning. Castle Hedingham had a number of evacuees from East London and as a group we all banded together to combat the teasing and taunts of the local children.

I stayed in Castle Hedingham until after the summer holidays in 1941. During that time I remember two Land Army girls were billeted on my grand parents. They were in Castle Hedingham to help clear several areas of land of trees to provide pit props for the coal mines.
I returned to London and my mother and went back to my original school in the September. This was my sixth change of school in 2 years and though it had broadened my experience of life it had not improved my education very much and my eleven plus was looming the next year.

The Blitz had died down somewhat so life was reasonably safe where we lived.
My father returned from Ireland to work at the War Office in London at the beginning of 1942. He brought with him lots of interesting food, as rationing was in full swing in this country.
He got very very cross with me because I told my friends some of the things he had brought back with him. To this day I do not understand why he reacted in this way.

My progress at school in preparation for the forth coming 11 plus was not satisfactory so my father came to the school and complained to the Headmaster who them proceeded to threaten me with the cane if I did not work harder.
I duly sat the eleven plus in March 1942 and failed by 1 mark. Luckily I was given a re sit in a nice pleasant and less intimating environment and passed on the second attempt.

My mother who was doing war work part time, working at the Hoover factory assembling radios for Lancaster bombers She used to work on Sunday morning once a fortnight so it was my job to cook the Sunday roast dinner (all prepared of course) I never did manage to get a Yorkshire pudding to rise properly with batter made from dried eggs. My mother was keen for me to go to a good quality grammar school so I sat the entrance exam for Latymer Upper School in the June. I was not impressed at the time with this Victorian building or its contents, but luckily I passed the exam and started at this excellent school in the September 1942. The downside was the travelling from Perivale to Hammersmith every day for five years.
Half of the school had been evacuated to some where west of London in 1939 and by the end of 1943 the war at home had calmed down sufficiently to allow the two halves of the school to reunite.

My father returned to his unit that summer in 1942 and left for unknown foreign parts. We did not see him again for 4 years.

During the four year period my father was away we had little idea where he was only where he might have been. After service in Madagascar, Persia, N.Africa, Sicily and Italy he finished up in Egypt as the registrar in charge of 1,000 bed hospital, where he finished out the war in a safe posting.

School went on and we still experienced the odd bombing raid, ever hopeful that the Luftwaffer would hit the tube line to Hammersmith and give me a few days off school. We used to stand outside the front door watching the searchlights trying to find the enemy bombers we could hear the shrapnel tinkling in the road from the ack ack shells. When the mobile gun down the road started firing we used to beat a quick retreat to the cupboard under the stairs. Although we had an Anderson shelter in the back garden, it was useless as it was constantly full of water.
In May 1944 things changed for the civilian population in the south east when the doodlebugs started to arrive. Up until that time I had not really experienced any fear of the war, it had been a great diversion from the norm. I was now 13 and began to understand the dangers as we watched our fighters trying and not always succeeding to knock them out of the sky. It was especially frightening when the engines cut out and waiting for the bang.

After a very short period of the doodlebug raids they closed the school early for the summer holidays.
My mother realising that I was scared, packed a suitcase, and sent it “luggage in advance” to my grand parent’s home. Early one morning we then set off on our bikes to cycle the 60 odd miles to Castle Hedingham where we arrived by early evening. My poor mum was shattered having ridden a sit up and beg bike with 28 inch wheels with a heavy frame. We passed a convoy of troops in Epping Forest, probably on their way to the D day beaches. One of the soldiers gave my mother a letter to post which she was very reluctant to do as it would not have been censored for any information likely to assist the enemy.

By September 1944 the Doodle bug menace was more or less over and the school reopened. But it was not long before we were experiencing the effect of the V2 rockets. Luckily they did not last too long as the launch sites were overrun by the armies in France and Belgium.

In 1945 it was just a matter of time before the war in Europe would be over. VE day arrived on the 8th May with much rejoicing by everyone everywhere.
I remember the street parties that started soon afterwards with the bonfires in the streets, usually lit on the steel sheets from the indoor Morrison shelters which melted the tarmac underneath them.
Then on the 15th August the forgotten war in the Far East came to an end with the surrender of the Japanese. I remember I was at Liverpool Street station on my way to my grandparents for a holiday when the news was announced.

My father returned home in the spring of 1946, but only just. A four year absence can place a strain on any marriage. My mother was very upset that he might not return home and I wrote a letter pleading with him to do so.
Before the war he was an ordinary postman driving a van in London. No way was he going to return to that way of life and all that went with it, having risen to the rank of major running 1,000 bed hospital for the army.

He finished his army career in England as an adjutant at a prison of war camp early in 1947. Whilst he was there one of the prisoners who was a keen chess player made a chess set from materials my father found for him. It is a perfect example of wood craftsman skills with very limited tools. I still have that chess set which is as perfect as the day it was made.

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